Teaching the Bible with Crafts- Mark and Becky Bryan

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April 4, 2023

Mark and Becky Bryan have 50+ years as missionaries in Austria. They sit down with CFS to discuss how they were able to bring so many youngsters to a saving faith in Christ just by using crafts! [email protected] http://www.austroventure.com.

00:00: Okay, so I'm Terry Kammerzell, and I'm here with Creation Fellowship Santee, and we're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account, as told in Genesis, is a true depiction of how
00:16: God created life and everything else in just six days, a few thousand years ago.
00:22: We've been meeting in this online platform since June of 2020, and we've been blessed by lots of presentations by various speakers who bring a blend of creation science, current events, and even other theology presentations.
00:39: So if you, oh, I just spaced out. We all do that, right?
00:45: So anyway, you can find links to most of our past presentations by typing in tinyurl .com
00:52: forward slash cfsantee. That's c like creation, f like fellowship, and santee is spelled s -a -n -t -e -e.
01:01: You can also email us at creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com so that you get on our email list.
01:08: We never spam, but we'll send you links to all of our upcoming speakers, which is a great and exciting thing, because if you do visit that page that I mentioned, you'll see that we have quite a few speakers booked out for the rest of this calendar year.
01:23: Tonight, we're very happy to have Mark and Becky Bryan. Mark and Becky Bryan have been missionaries in Austria serving for over 50 years.
01:32: They are sent out by Bible Fellowship Church in Hemet, California, and they are funded through the
01:39: D .M. Stearns Missionary Fund. They have a unique ministry ministering to children using
01:47: Bible -based crafts that they have created, and now they are actually back in the
01:53: United States, and they're in Idaho helping with the Good News Club through Child Evangelism Fellowship.
02:00: It's special for me to have them here because Mark and Becky Bryan have been friends of my family since before I was born, and I even got the of visiting them in Austria back in 2014.
02:11: With that, I am happy to introduce to you Mark and Becky. Go ahead. Hello.
02:19: Yeah, it's Mark and Becky Bryan, and as Terry said, we've served Christ in Austria for over 50 years, from early 1971 through 2022.
02:37: We're thankful for this opportunity to share about this one aspect of our ministry over these years.
02:53: So the first 10 years of our ministry in Austria was in local evangelical churches in Vienna, capital of Austria, and during that time,
03:12: God gave us four sons, and it was great having them in later hosts.
03:21: So we didn't stay in Vienna. We had ministry in another province of Austria, but then in 1991, we moved to Klagenfurt in the south of Austria.
03:39: And over the years, Becky had many opportunities to teach Bible lessons during programs for children at church retreats, and we had a lot of time with children, and she got, as she had all these opportunities to teach
03:56: Bible lessons, and so it was a very valuable time, but we had to use this time wisely, and so Becky began praying and asking the
04:13: Lord for creative ideas for Bible lesson -centered craft projects that would be directly related to the
04:21: Bible lessons. So not just the
04:27: Bible lessons, we wanted everything that we did with the children to connect and relate to each other.
04:34: So Mark, of course, had to know all of the lessons just as well as I did, but he chose and accompanied the songs that were directly related to the
04:45: Bible lessons, and oftentimes, we'd have such a large group. The children would be usually 4 to 12 years old, and if we had quite a few children, we would divide the group up.
04:58: So Mark would do the lessons with the older kids, and I would do with the younger kids. So we know that children ages 4 to 14 especially love doing craft projects, so when we started doing this with the children, we saw that they kept the projects for many years, and they were reminded of the
05:27: Bible lessons for at least as long as they kept the crafts. So as an example of this, we could give you many, many examples, but there's one girl,
05:38: Astrid. She was with us at retreats over many years, and later we saw her.
05:47: She was done school. She'd done her nurse's training, and we were at a wedding where she was, and she came up to us and she said, do you know what
05:54: I have in my wallet? Well, money. Well, no, yes, I do have some money, but she pulled out this one thing that was part of a whole series of lessons that we were doing, and this had all the lessons and the verses and everything on it that she says,
06:15: I keep this with me to remind me of what I learned during those days of this particular project, and I can carry it with me because it's so small, but all the other bigger things she had at home still in her room to remind her of God's word that she learned during week -long retreat, many different years after another.
06:38: Another example was two kids, Leo and Pia. They were already done.
06:46: They're like high school and both in university, and their mom wanted to clean out their rooms, and she asked them, well, what can
06:54: I get rid of? She said, you can get rid of everything, but just not the crafts that we did with Mark and Becky because those are important to us, and those remind us of God's word and things that we learned during the retreat times, and before we left
07:10: Austria, we visited a family that we've been close to for a long, long time. Their boys are still young, still in school, and of course, through COVID, we missed many retreat times because they were all cancelled, but they went and brought out all the things that they'd done with us in the past, and they have them in their room so that they can look at them and see them every day.
07:33: They see the verses that are on there, reminded of God's word and God's faithfulness and love for them.
07:40: That's an encouragement to us to see that kids spend a lot of time, and they enjoy doing the crafts, and they keep the things that they've made.
07:54: So, as we said, Becky had especially many opportunities to teach
08:02: Bible lessons at seminars and weekend retreats for churches.
08:10: We had time to do crafts that took time, so one example of this that makes these more valuable to the children is shown here.
08:28: It's a two -sided craft project, and on each side, there are two pictures, and when it's folded, at one angle, you see one picture, and another angle, you see the other picture, and on the reverse side, you can see a
08:52: Bible verse, and then the graphics art thing, a picture showing something related to the lessons on Joseph.
09:04: And a couple of Bible lesson -centered craft projects that we did, and then our lighthouse mobile.
09:19: How do you say that in English? Anyway, yeah, it's our grandson who was doing it at our home, but we did this with a group of children at a
09:34: Sunday meeting of churches in our province, and it's with Bible verses on each part of this mobile.
09:47: I don't know how it's pronounced in English, but yeah, so we have scripture for the children to remind them of God's promises and truths.
10:05: So our oldest son, Christopher, he's a graphic arts and design guy, and he would help us with a lot of the craft projects that we did.
10:20: Becky had ideas that she would pray and ask the Lord for, but he then put things...
10:27: Do the artwork. Yeah, do the artwork. This is our creation days project that he designed even while he was still studying graphic arts.
10:38: So it's an emphasis on the six days of creation, and then the seventh day of rest, and then he also helped with the design of the
10:50: Noah pop -up, and that's a really cool thing. It just is one page that opens up with the ark and the rainbow and Noah and his family, and that's really cool.
11:07: So Becky would explain a Bible Lesson Center craft project at church retreat and help the kids understand what they're actually doing and needed to do, and this little boy has an interesting history.
11:28: He looks like an angel, but at first he wasn't. He's a very troubled little boy and ended up at three years old living with the foster family, but we only had him for two different retreats.
11:44: In this picture, he was five, and so we had him the following year as well, and then we haven't seen him for many years, partly because of COVID and all the restrictions, but not every church had a retreat every year, so we didn't know what had happened in his life, but this past summer in Austria, we saw him at a wedding.
12:10: Actually, his parents came running up to us and said, oh, you're here. You're here. We're so glad you're here. We are so thankful for all the time that you invested in our son, and the crafts that he made with you guys during those two retreat times are still on his desk, and we talk about them nearly every day, especially the lessons that you gave on forgiving and being forgiven and being able to forgive, and it's only
12:42: Jesus who can do that in our lives, and so it's a daily topic that we remember that God loves us so much, and he wants to forgive us, and Robert is now 12, and he's taller than I am, but it was a blessing to see that God's word is still speaking to him and still really present in his life.
13:11: So, we spent a lot of time helping the children with these
13:18: Bible lessons and our craft projects, and it was a real blessing to us as well to them and to their parents, and we would do help at a club in a place called
13:35: Neumarkt in our province. No, it's actually in the northern province, but just over the border from our province, and our co -worker from the
13:46: German mission that we had gone with was there and needed help doing this club that she had, and so we did crafts in on the living room table and on the floor of the living room, and and they, because it was kind of cramped, we were spread out everywhere, but there were two girls that would come very faithfully, and they still are going, and they would ask if they could do two or three projects in order to give them to friends that couldn't come to the club or to relatives, and they could tell them about the
14:31: Bible lesson and give them something that goes along with it to remind their friends about God's love and how much
14:41: He wants a relationship with us. So, your children, again, doing
14:51: Bible lesson centered craft projects, doing a program for the kids at a church retreat, and then as you see there are several projects in front of them that were working on that went along with the lessons that they were getting.
15:07: Our craft projects are in three languages, German, English, and Spanish, and so we have all the different languages represented there.
15:19: Yeti was in Becky's Sunday school in Vienna in the 70s, and she's still helping us with the
15:27: German, and Yvette is from Colombia in South America, and she translates for us in Spanish.
15:36: Very thankful for them and their help, and it's really a joy to see
15:42: Spanish -speaking children with their leaders showing off their
15:47: Bible lesson centered projects, and German -speaking children from the
15:58: Vienna area with their projects, and our craft projects are also valuable for supporting
16:07: Bible truths in English, too, and it's really wonderful to see children who are happy about the time they've had with us and the projects that they were able to do and we know that they keep these things.
16:25: They spent time doing them, and they're valuable to them, and they're thankful for them, and one group gave us a thank you card, which was this very heavy tile.
16:43: Thank you very much, and not all the children did get to sign it.
16:52: In this group, there are about 50 children, and some had already left before they got their names on the tile, but there are three children here from one family.
17:01: There's Christoph, Ursi, and Frony, and the three we had had at different retreats from the time
17:09: Ursi was three, Frony was five, Christoph was seven, and we saw them every year at a church retreat, and to see their growth and faith, we're thankful for their parents, and most of these kids being in local churches do have parents that know the
17:32: Lord and are helping them to grow in their walk with Christ, but the parents of these three we know have kept all of the projects that they made with us and said that they contributed a lot of the discipleship and the growth of their children from that concentrated week that we'd have at the church retreat.
17:53: Well, in the meantime, Christoph is in his early 30s.
18:00: He told us when he was about 11 at one of the retreats, he said, you know,
18:06: I think God wants me to be a missionary. I think he wants me to be a doctor, like a medical missionary, and I think
18:15: God wants me to go to Mongolia. He said, we'll be praying with you,
18:20: Christoph, if that's what God wants. He will lead you, and he'll plan your life that you can do just that for him, and Christoph is an eye surgeon.
18:31: He's married, let's say, I think he got married about two years ago. His wife is a nurse, and they go on mission trips to Mongolia to do yeah, help as medical missionaries.
18:46: Frony does a lot of the work with a Christian bookstore in Vienna, helping also set up the big book table at the
18:57: Christmas market in the center of Vienna. Their youngest sister, Ursi, is a teacher and is also in charge of the, it's like a type of WANA program for children in all of Austria, and we've seen
19:13: God really do his work in these three lives, and we know it's not just them.
19:20: There are many who have also gone on into missions. We know a young gal and her family, they're missionaries in Scotland.
19:28: Another has gone to Africa, and there are other places where many of the kids who've been encouraged to be faithful and following the
19:37: Lord, and oftentimes their parents have said it's because they have those Bible verses and those crafts on their tables, on their walls, everywhere that they see them every day.
19:51: So another of our projects, it's called the Books of the
19:56: Bible Bookshelf, and it helps them to remember what the books of the
20:04: Bible are, and it has the wordless book colors in pearls at the bottom there, so it helps them to remember the gospel too.
20:19: Also there on that little plaque, it says, read your Bible every day, and we know many were encouraged to do that.
20:27: We're thankful. Three sisters from the church we're in at last did this advent calendar, so each day in December leading up to Christmas, they had a picture to put on and a picture where they colored it, and it was an advent calendar.
20:56: But they had also a small devotional to go along with that picture that they spent some time in the word thinking about what happened leading up to Christmas and the different figures that may have or may not have been there, but using the scripture to direct things that they could learn.
21:17: So of course their artwork varied, but they enjoyed doing it and profited from it then through the just doing it and through the scripture that they were given then to accompany that.
21:38: These sisters also made our God's Message in Colors craft. It goes along with the colors of the wordless book, but we had these little pockets on the left that figures, colored figures, could go in.
21:58: They could take out and explain. It would help them explain the gospel to their friends, and these three sisters actually did that.
22:11: They were sharing the with their friends using this, so that was a real blessing.
22:18: It's another more simple of our craft projects where we call it the
22:25: Good Shepherd name banners, and at a kid's celebration in Toggenfurt, Austria in 2019, we did that with 85 kids, and these are close -ups of examples of that name banner that actually our grandkids did.
22:49: In the Psalm 23 project, that's probably our most involved and nicest of our projects.
22:56: It's a leporello, and it depicts each of the six verses of Psalm 23. We originally did it with wooden frames, which was a lot of work.
23:07: We've now developed a frame that is from one piece of paper, heavier paper, that works.
23:18: Anyway, this project folds down to a really compact size. When it's opened up, it's really a valuable display of truth and reminds the children of Psalm 23 and what all is in that.
23:34: For the different languages, depending on the project, quite a few pages may be needed to print out
23:49: PDF pages from our website in order to have the directions and patterns for the projects.
24:01: Pictures help. In fact, for some things, we don't have patterns, so we have to use pictures and the directions for the children to make the projects.
24:17: Bible verses are also there to be printed out. So we transitioned our ministry to Idaho.
24:26: We are not just going into retirement.
24:33: We have a lot of work to do. We have more than 90 Bible lesson -centered craft projects yet to do to make them ready for our website in German, English, and Spanish.
24:47: The present website is UlsterVenture .com, but we want to get our new website up and running with BibleLessonCrafts .com,
24:57: and that is a better name, more appropriate for what we actually are putting on the website.
25:06: It's another project where it took over 100 files just to make this project in German, English, and Spanish.
25:19: There's a lot of preparation for these things, but it's worth it.
25:27: So our Go Into All the World project has been on the website of a friend in Florida, Sarah Keith with the
25:37: Sunday School Teachers Association. In any case, she put our project on her website, the
25:48: Sunday School Teachers, and it was just a link to us.
25:56: So we have gotten requests from all over the world for this one project, and it's downloadable from our
26:06: UlsterVenture .com website. So we're very thankful for everyone who prays and waits and trusts the
26:15: Lord with us for progress with the publishing of our Bible Lesson Center crafts.
26:22: And I really appreciate the time that we could have with you, sharing with you this evening.
26:31: Is this the end of your presentation? That's it. Yeah, we didn't want to ramble.
26:38: We could talk all night about all that God has done in different kids' lives, our own lives, through the ministry that he has given us, how we are blessed by that ourselves, and just so thankful.
26:54: Anyway, we didn't want to ramble and just go on and on, because, like I said, talk all night through the next week even.
27:02: I was, you know, leading. We led together the children with the music, but I chose the songs and accompanied the songs with the children with the guitar.
27:16: And at this one retreat, it was a weekend retreat, well,
27:23: Thursday, Friday, Thursday evening, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning. And the children learned this one song, this one song from Psalm 118.
27:37: And it's in three parts, where one part of the group of children begin, and the next group sets in, and then the next group sets in.
27:53: And we sang this for a few hundred, probably 300 children's workers in Austria at their conference.
28:07: And afterwards, a guy that we've known for many years, he came up to us at lunch and he said, you know, there's some heavenly things, and that was one of them.
28:22: And that really blessed our hearts. The children were so super in singing that.
28:29: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, there are a number of stories to tell about the children that we had the privilege of ministering to and being with.
28:41: And, yeah, it was not easy to leave Austria, but we're nearly dead.
28:49: So here we are in Idaho, and we're looking for someplace to live now.
28:56: Well, yeah. So maybe, because we do have plenty of time, so we have some questions.
29:03: So let's do the questions. And then I thought maybe I could share your, I'll share my screen and share your website, and you could just point out a few things to people.
29:13: And then if you want to share one or two more stories after that time, then if that, does that sound like a good idea to you guys?
29:20: Yeah, sure, sure. So let's see. The first question here is how did you get started in crafts?
29:29: Was it working with the kids first or working with the crafts first? Working with the kids first.
29:37: Because when we were at a retreat or like a seminar or whatever, we would have a lot of time.
29:47: And because we have such a large age group, you can't play games that whole time.
29:53: Either the games are too scary, hard, whatever, for little ones.
30:00: Competition. And the competition that the older ones need is too much for the little ones. And it just, so we have to find a way that we can do things with all of them together, because we didn't have many helpers.
30:14: And it was just the two of us. And so as I would really begin praying,
30:20: God, how can we do this? And what would be the best way? Because you can't sing the whole time.
30:26: You can't teach the whole time. And games were difficult just because of the age span.
30:33: And some groups were very large. Some were very small. But sometimes you'd have two or three that are really young and two or three that are older, like 10, 12, whatever.
30:45: Not that we never did any games. We did games. But we did games that they could all do together.
30:50: And it wasn't so competitive and so hard. Usually after doing the crafts.
30:56: But God just started giving me ideas for ways that we could explain the truths that we were teaching as something they could take home and keep and be reminded and not just take their colored paper and dump it in the trash can as it went out the door.
31:17: We didn't want that. We wanted crafts to be something of value that the kids would treasure and would remember what we taught.
31:28: Because we didn't want to just do crafts to do crafts. We wanted that it be associated with God's word and with the lessons that we were teaching.
31:37: Usually we, especially if it was a week -long retreat, we would have a theme for the whole week, like a series of lessons on the life of David or Christian character or fruits of the spirit or whatever, different things.
32:00: And we really sought God and what he wanted us to teach for every group.
32:07: And he was faithful. God is so faithful. During a retreat, somebody comes, that's what
32:16: I needed to hear. Then God gave us ideas for crafts to represent that.
32:26: It's been amazing to us to see the things that God gave us to do with the kids.
32:35: And he supplied also the materials that we would need. So Jessica is asking, what difficulties did or do you face serving in full -time ministry?
32:51: Hmm. Okay. Say that, ask this again. This is kind of a...
32:58: What difficulties did or do you face serving in full -time ministry?
33:10: Well, you know, I was in leadership with our
33:17: American mission for a time. And I wasn't really prepared for it well.
33:26: And my kind of leading is more where I step back and let the others have input and do what they want to do.
33:42: But that doesn't always work so well if they have ideas, even if they have said they want to do a certain thing, they may not want to follow through with what they've decided to do, for example.
34:12: Anyway, so interpersonal relationships and understanding each other and misunderstandings that can come up, some of the more difficult things in the work that we did with the children.
34:30: And there were sometimes parents who were not of the same mind as we were as far as how we did children's ministry.
34:46: Yeah. So, you know, you always have that type of thing. But for us, so we are guests in Austria, and we need to listen to the
35:00: Austrian and what they wanted for their country and how we could best help them.
35:07: And we did things differently than many missionaries and missionary organizations do by putting ourselves under Austrian leadership.
35:17: And we did end up being with the German mission board the last 30 years and are very thankful for them and thankful that we could listen to what the others felt was most important for their country.
35:37: Actually, we had less problems. But it's working cross -culturally that is not always so easy.
35:46: And we need to step back and allow, like in our case, the
35:52: Austrians to lead and to direct what we needed to do. There are very few evangelical
36:00: American missionaries in Austria now. Most of the work is being done by Austrians.
36:09: We're very thankful for that. That's the way it should be. We've seen God really raise up many, many
36:17: Austrian leaders who are good leaders and who are faithful, faithful to the
36:24: Lord, to his word. And we're thankful. And we're thankful for the opportunity that we had to serve there.
36:31: And it's very hard to leave. Yeah, I can imagine.
36:37: I mean, I got to visit you guys and I know how much you were very settled there. It was a nice life to have there.
36:44: So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so that we can just kind of walk through your website together.
36:52: I know we do have a couple of specific questions about your crafts. So let's do that.
36:58: Can you see my screen also? Yes. Okay. So June, who just flew from Idaho to California today, she's asking if you have any suggestions for Palm Sunday crafts.
37:16: So first, let's go through where do we find your crafts? And by the way, this is
37:21: AustroVenture .com. Although you mentioned that you're going to be changing your website soon, right?
37:27: So I'm sure there will be some transition time or if people come here, they'll be able to find the new link.
37:34: But if we go to craft projects, is that where we're going to find the different crafts that people can print?
37:40: Yeah. And then do you have any that would be appropriate for a
37:45: Palm Sunday craft? I don't think on the website yet.
37:53: Okay. I know that we do have some that we have done in the past that are not, they don't have directions yet, which has been the problem the whole time, is getting, writing the directions for the crafts.
38:12: I don't, the only thing that we have that is any holiday related thing is that there's one
38:20: Advent devotional booklet and Christmas ornaments and there's
38:27: John 14 .6. Well, there are some verses that are more simple ones, but this one may also be a more elaborate one.
38:37: No, this is just a small Advent. Like there's a, it just is a strip that gets, kids can just color it.
38:47: This, we did it on a one morning kind of a thing. So it wasn't very elaborate.
38:54: Sure. If you go back, just click out of this and go to, back to the craft project.
39:06: John 14 .6 Way, Truth and Life, U .S. Oh, so now we have lots of different links.
39:15: So we've got directions and the, and then different patterns there. Okay. And this is, if I click on the directions, is there a picture of the craft?
39:26: I think so. PDF comes up. Oh, okay.
39:32: I see that. So it's, it's two different ways. It can be like in a small flower pot where you just have the, the arrows or in like a taped into a can where the, you can use it to put pencils in or, you know, whatever.
39:52: Sure. And now, okay. So we are a creation fellowship. So I did see that you had something about Noah.
40:01: Did you have, do you have a craft about the days of creation? We do, but I don't think it's on the website yet, is it?
40:09: I don't think so. Okay. But I do see your Noah hair. Noah is our one.
40:15: So let's look at that one. We don't have many on the, on our website because it takes so long to write the directions.
40:24: Yeah. And this shows the different pieces and there is one like a two -sided cover.
40:33: Well, the top picture is the cover. And when you, it, we opened it up, it, it's a pop -up.
40:42: So these other parts are in the middle of the page. And it shows you where to glue them on so that it pops up the right way.
40:51: That's fun. One of the patterns shows where the pieces are to be glued.
40:59: And so that's where, what these other links are for also. Yes. And they need all of these parts.
41:09: And they print out the PDFs, all of the PDFs and copy them for as many children as they would want to share it with.
41:18: Okay. What's your favorite craft on the website? On the website?
41:24: Well, this looks like another fun creation one, this heaven and earth.
41:30: Yeah, it's the verse. Yeah, you'll see it. It's. Is it like a mobile?
41:39: Yeah. I think you were talking about that one earlier. Shall pass away, but my word will not pass away.
41:46: Nice. So you have the cloud and then a globe. Oh, there you go. A cloud and then a globe either in a ball or a flat shape thing with like two sides of it.
42:03: Yeah. So, and then we made the simple form for the younger kids in a more elaborate form, like the
42:11: Bible would be really a 3D kind of a thing. And or else just plain flat.
42:21: Some of the older kids really like doing a little bit more complicated things. And this is what needs to just go quickly.
42:32: This is where if Robyn's, if Robyn's internet was working well, this is where she would have inserted some kind of a snarky remark about flat earth.
42:43: That we prefer to make the spherical version. Right, right. And we did too.
42:49: And the kids really enjoyed that. And we did have hours. I mean, in the morning we'd have usually eight from eight to 12 or right after breakfast, maybe 830, but we keep the kids with us until the parents came to pick them up.
43:03: And some parents talk longer than others. And so we were able to keep them busy and not just busy work.
43:13: They were doing something that was valuable and worthwhile to them. Yeah. Well, so a list of photos, is this a list of all of the ones that you have on the website or all of the ones that you've made, even if they're not on the website?
43:33: I don't think we have pictures of all of them. They would be just the ones that are on the website. Okay. So there, so there's an overview of all the ones on the website.
43:42: Oh, and like you do have the folding book here and yeah. So those are some really fun ones.
43:49: And like the perpetual calendar too. It's one that the kids have all really enjoyed. Oh yeah.
43:56: And it's a lot of folding and a lot of, you know, they have to do it right and color it.
44:06: And so the things that we we've created or God has given us ideas for are things that are not just simple that are done in 10 minutes.
44:18: Yeah. They take a lot more time. And we even have done, had a test group of kids from our neighborhood that would come in and try and see how long it would take.
44:30: And some things take a lot of time, but sometimes you, I mean, people can download these things and do it with their, with their children or their grandchildren.
44:40: And it's, I don't know if you noticed the sheep on the Psalm 23 craft there.
44:48: You might guess what those sheep actually are.
44:54: Which, help me find which one. Psalm 23. Psalm 23. With the, oh, number nine.
45:03: Yeah. This one that says no fear. No, no. So if you, if you can kind of zoom in on that, what did we use for the sheep?
45:19: Oh, for the sheep. Is it cotton balls? No. What did you use?
45:25: Oh, it is close. It's close, but it's not cotton balls. They are the tips of safety q -tips.
45:34: Children's, children's, they call them safety ear swabs or whatever.
45:41: Yeah. Like the q -tips, but it has that safety issue and it makes it like a little head and a body.
45:48: Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's fun. That's, that's very creative. And because we were looking for something, because just to put a ball there, it doesn't really look like a sheep.
45:58: And these look like sheep. So it's, it's work, you know, for people to, who want to use these, to get the materials all together.
46:06: Yeah. It's, it takes some time, but it pays off.
46:12: It's worth it. Yeah. Like in this, this particular version, we had found a paper that looked like a meadow and one that was like sky.
46:24: So it was like wrapping paper or something. And so we use that, but then I couldn't find it anymore.
46:30: And so we just use that to find something fabric or other things or even just plain paper.
46:42: Yeah. But you can print out things like that too. Yeah. So it's not like it's impossible.
46:50: No, but it's very clever and it gets people thinking it's a, it's a nice change of pace for a technology world to be able to come up with some creative hands -on projects.
47:03: So it it'll get people, you know, hopefully we have people in our audience who will come and do them.
47:10: And even if it takes a little bit of time or thinking outside the box, they'll be able to gather the supplies and, and make it a worthwhile investment.
47:17: Notice the one number 13, the pool of Bethesda. Let me get back there.
47:26: Those, the cross, well, that's just one of what three or four sides, three sides.
47:33: It has, you turn those sticks and it brings us the picture.
47:42: Okay. Jesus loves you, but there's, uh, you turn it, there's three sides to it.
47:48: Three different things that it says. Three things there. If I go to the instructions for it, will it show me that?
47:55: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let me try that. It may.
48:04: If it's on there. So it's the list.
48:10: Yeah. Yeah. It'll be the pool of Bethesda. Yeah. Yeah. Getting some practice here.
48:25: Okay. So there it, well, I guess it's four. No, it's three sided. So there, those are the five sticks or six sticks.
48:34: And so it says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And so once I, you turn, you only see the water and then the other side, you have the verse and then you have
48:50: Jesus, like in the form of a cross that Jesus loves you. I see at 1631.
48:59: So each piece is on a stick that rotates and each piece has four sides. Right.
49:04: Okay. Three sides. Yeah. Three sides. Okay. Oh, there you go. Yeah. That's cool.
49:12: Yeah. So they have to make the pool that it's in. And that obviously is the lesson that we taught, but the truth of it is
49:24: Jesus loves me and he is concerned about me and my personal life and whatever
49:30: I'm going through and believing on him, we will be saved.
49:36: And whether we're saved from whatever physical thing we're going through right now or whatever, we are not alone.
49:44: He is with us and he wants to really be our savior in whatever form that takes.
49:54: And it's just a visual that helps to remember that.
50:00: And that's in German, English and Spanish, but the pictures I put on here are usually
50:07: German because we didn't always do it in English. We always did crafts first in German.
50:18: And we started doing it in Spanish because somebody had asked us, do you have this in Spanish?
50:24: Or we're going on a missions trip with our youth group. Do you have anything in Spanish we could take?
50:30: Yeah. We started doing things in Spanish, although I don't speak any Spanish.
50:36: Mark growing up in California, of course, knew some, but that's why we have
50:41: Yvette who translates for us. So just once more for people to see before I stop sharing is that the website is
50:52: AustroVenture, which is a play on the fact that you guys were in Austria and having adventures, right?
51:02: So AustroVenture. And so it's AustroVenture .com and that's where people can find that and find some pictures and other information about the time that you served for over 50 years.
51:14: Now, we do have a little bit more time if you want to share a couple more stories about the kids that that you were able to minister to.
51:25: I think that I think that here, at least here in the Zoom room, where we were enjoying hearing some of those stories.
51:31: So maybe you'd like to tell a couple more of those. Well, there was another young gal who she came to the retreats.
51:43: It was a moms and kids retreat. And she was a little older already. Like she must have been like 11, 12.
51:52: So we didn't have her very often. But I think during that time, she really solidified her walk with the
52:02: Lord and really wanted to serve him. And as a young teen, she wanted to be baptized.
52:10: And again, she's one of the others to kept most every craft that she made with us.
52:17: And she didn't want to be baptized if we couldn't be there to be part of that and to witness her baptism.
52:26: And missions has always been one thing that we've emphasized with the children over the years.
52:32: And Bella was one who early felt that God wanted her to share her faith with others in whatever country.
52:40: And she has served God in many different places. I know she was in Italy for a while.
52:47: And after she married, she and her husband wanted to go into ministry together. And they went to Bible school in Scotland and have stayed to minister there.
52:58: And to see how God used some simple things to help her in her walk with the
53:03: Lord. And she has, I don't know if she still has those things or it might be impacted her parents.
53:11: But God used some of those things to speak to her and to continue over the time after we've been together.
53:21: And she's serving the Lord with her family in an amazing ministry in Scotland.
53:31: And let's see who else can we tell about. There's so many to tell you about. Yeah, with Bella, that was pretty exciting to see
53:41: God lead her. And then from up in the forest.
53:52: Theo. Theo, yeah. His grandson. Yeah. Yeah, with that wordless book banner that we made or banner, that thing with the pockets.
54:04: One of the little boys, very shy. Just very, very shy. But every night he wanted to do that with his dad.
54:13: Practice telling the story using the wordless book. And he's now a few years older.
54:21: And I'm sure God has given him the courage to talk more boldly about his faith.
54:28: At the time it was maybe five, but he was very shy. And we know that God can use him too in a mighty way because he's preparing himself already to be able to share the simple truth of the gospel with those five colors.
54:45: And we've seen that the crafts really have had an impact on kids' lives and what, yeah, that they can remember them more readily.
54:59: The word of God that has, yeah, that they've seen, that they have learned, that they have sung.
55:07: And been reminded. Yeah, been reminded of nearly every day when they look at it.
55:13: And like with that one boy, the word was forgiven, to be able to forgive and that we can be forgiven.
55:21: And he was a foster child. He shared that. Yes. And so he had a difficult time with being foster child loving parents, but he was at first, at least he was,
55:39: I had a hard time following. And we had a rule for the discipline and we would tell the children, we need to respect each other, help each other.
55:52: And if you can't do that, if you can't concentrate and pay attention, then we give you one warning and two warnings.
56:03: And the third time we would take you to their parents and interrupt everything. And yeah, the children, when we, we didn't always share that, but when we did, we heard, well, that's embarrassing.
56:22: And I would think, or if we didn't say it, well, yeah. But we almost took
56:30: Robert into his parents. Fortunately, we didn't have to.
56:37: He chose to be respectful. And that was a milestone in his life.
56:46: And, you know, the other kids, they don't appreciate it when somebody's stealing their time, basically by taking up time, by being unruly, you know?
56:59: So anyway, we, you can't always do that. Of course, we had a special situation where we were able to do that type of thing.
57:08: In some schools, it's a different situation, but kids appreciate it.
57:14: Usually when their time is not being robbed by somebody has been a mess.
57:24: But there have been many, many other children that, you know, we only were able to see most of them once a year.
57:32: And when they would come and tell us the things that they remember from the last time, what are we going to do this time?
57:40: What are we going to learn about? What are we going to make? And to see their excitement, and it's very infectious, too, for us to make us even more excited about what we do.
57:52: We love what we do with children and excited about the things that God has given us and the opportunities we've had.
58:00: But to see the kids excited about learning about the Lord and learning God's word and making something that represents that and that they can take home with them, that they can remember.
58:12: And they would usually just come running and excited that we were going to do things together.
58:19: And one thing that was kind of hard for us last summer when we were in Austria packing up our household, we went to a birthday party of one of our colleagues.
58:34: And the kids from that church, they came running up to us so happy to see us.
58:41: And then it was like, now, wait a minute. Why weren't you here when we had our retreat?
58:47: We did finally have our retreat and you weren't there. And then we had to tell them that we were also going to be leaving
58:58: Austria. And they said, no, that doesn't work. The next time we have a retreat, you're going to be there even if it's with a
59:07: Zoom meeting and somebody will do the crafts with us. But you have to do this with us.
59:13: You've got to figure this out. Just to see that they wanted that input from God's word and they wanted the time to do crafts with us and to have more things to remember
59:30: God's word and the Bible lessons that they had. And he said, if you figure this out, we will come back to Austria.
59:40: If there are enough churches that have a retreat scheduled around the same time, we'll come.
59:46: So we'll see what God does, whether we can go back and do more retreats with some of these churches that we've served over many years.
59:59: Well, indeed, God is faithful. So it's exciting for me as one of your supporters and friends to see what he has in store for the rest of the time.
01:00:13: So let's do one more time. You want to tell people how they can find you and also if they'd like to support you, how they could do that too?
01:00:26: Well, okay. Our email address is mark and as a mark with K and an
01:00:35: N like North Pole, Becky, Brian, all written together, all small at iCloud .com.
01:00:49: So that's the easiest way to reach us. We check the email often, very often.
01:00:55: And then of course your website is austraventure .com. But we put out an update every month.
01:01:05: And for those who want to hear more, and oftentimes it's the same things that we share monthly, but there are usually added things that are important that we share weekly too.
01:01:22: So ongoing prayer requests and... Mostly prayer requests, yeah.
01:01:28: But news and what... Like what's going on here in the Bible club and...
01:01:34: And like right now, we're staying with our son, his wife and family.
01:01:40: And we're in Shea's office.
01:01:47: So we're looking to find a place, but we've needed to wait until the funds from the sale of our house in Austria come through.
01:02:01: And with the prices the way they are now, we'll be able to find something.
01:02:09: And we just are looking to the Lord to provide something where we can have ministry, where we can have people in and have room to do ministry.
01:02:20: But we also need room for continuing with the crafts.
01:02:25: And we have to, in a sense, redo everything as we write the directions.
01:02:31: So we need space. And we're just trusting God to provide that right house for us.
01:02:36: And that's the main prayer request for us. But also for one of the kids clubs, well, the club that we worked with our colleagues within Austria, that God just continue to bring the kids in.
01:02:51: They are allowed to meet again. And we're thankful for that. Ingrid, our colleague, does need help still in being able to do that.
01:03:02: And that God just continue to draw the children to him. She's the one that has a club in the house in Neumarkt.
01:03:12: So yeah. And all the other information as far as church and mission are in our updates.
01:03:24: Also for support, if anyone would like to contribute, they can find the information there for D .M.
01:03:31: Stern's Missionary Fund. So if anyone writes to us an email.
01:03:38: Mark is very faithful in answering every email right away. Okay. Well, I'm going to be quick about closing out here.
01:03:47: And if you guys can stay back, because we have a few questions in Zoom. But just so that everybody else knows, we're
01:03:54: Creation Fellowship Santee. You can find us links to most of our past presentations at tinyurl .com
01:04:01: forward slash CF Santee. That's C like creation, F like fellowship.
01:04:07: Santee is spelled S -A -N -T -E -E. You can also email us at creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com.
01:04:14: And our next speaker next week, we're going to be having Israel Wayne. He's a homeschool dad.
01:04:21: And he speaks quite a bit to families, helping to encourage them.
01:04:26: And next week, he'll be talking to us about a biblical view of economics. So you'll want to be sure to join us for that.
01:04:34: All right. So with that, we're going to go ahead and turn off the live stream and recording. Give me just a minute while I find all of those buttons.